The Most Influential (Western) Films of All Time

1) Workers Leaving the Lumiere Factory (1895)
Lasting just 45 seconds, and without sound or story, Workers Leaving the Lumiere Factory is credited as the first real movie. I can't call it thrilling in today's CGI, high definition cinematic landscape, what with it just being some people walking out of a big gate, but the Lumiere brothers had to start somewhere. It captivated millions as they caught their first glimpse of motion pictures at fairground demonstrations, including filmmakers like Melies, inspiring some to have a go themselves. It was the beginning of the biggest art form of the next century, an industry now worth billions.

2) The Great Train Robbery (1903)
Cinema was around for a few years before it started telling stories. So amazed was everyone at the moving pictures that they were content to watch a train slowing down or people leaving work. However, a few ingenious showmen changed that, offering crowds the chance to be entertained as well as amazed. We should, at this point, pause to recognise George Melies and his efforts. A genius illusionist, the Frenchman introduced many techniques of trickery to tell stories in exotic or fantastic locations (such as the moon), essentially inventing special effects during the twentieth century's first decade. However, the film that really solidified the narrative structure - a tale with a beginning, middle and end - was The Great Train Robbery. The first Western, it relayed the events surrounding a band of cowboy desperadoes who rob a train. They are pursued and killed. In 1903 that was quite a complex and thrilling novelty. Audiences loved it, and the fact that we go to the cinema to watch a story can be traced back to The Great Train Robbery's success.

This closing shot, pun intended, was recreated at the end of Goodfellas

3) The Birth of a Nation (1915)

A controversial film to say the least - perhaps don't cite it in your top 5. Telling the story of the Civil War and Reconstruction era, the Confederate States are pious victims, the KKK victorious heroes, and the Union Army marauding murderers (white actors in blackface). It is also credited with having started a KKK revival. Director DW Griffith did partially redeem himself with his next film Intolerance, a response to the accusations that he was an out-and-out bigot. Political content aside, The Birth of a Nation makes it onto this list because it introduced a host of new techniques. Perhaps not so obvious these days, at the time it was groundbreaking. Epic length and structure, large battles, scenes of great tragedy and emotion are all present. The complexity and the realism changed how people made films. It also solidified the cinema movie as a narrative tale lasting between one and two hours. Quentin Tarantino, that childish celebrator of bloody violence, claims to have made Django Unchained partly as a response to The Birth of a Nation, and that was almost a century later.

4) Strike / Battleship Potemkin (1925)

Despite waging a civil war, managing mass executions and famines, and bringing about communist utopia, the Soviets found time to revolutionise cinema. Their main contribution was the invention of montage - the blending of different images to convey new meaning. It is something that we take for granted, but when cannibalistic Siberian peasants first witnessed the phenomenon in Sergei Eisenstein's Strike it was beyond comprehension. Montage is now an accepted staple of filmmaking. For the most famous example, watch the celebrated Odessa Steps sequence in Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin, and consider how before the First World War the whole scene would have been shot from one, static camera.

5) Metropolis (1927)

Keen not to allow those pesky Bolsheviks over in the East to dominate, the Germans churned out nightmarish Expressionist cinema during their troublesome Weimar years. Nosferatu and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari mirrored the feverish paranoia of a continent in the grip of extremism and uncertainty. The Expressionists were influential for two reasons: first, they helped to establish horror, underpinning its early Gothic elements. Second, aesthetically their style can be traced up to the present day. Many of its directors went to Hollywood as the Nazis came to power (such as Preminger, Lang and Lubitsch), taking with them all of their stylistic acumen. From Gothic horror to Neo-Noir, the aesthetics remain alive and well today. Metropolis, from Fritz Lang, is one of the more epic examples. Different versions exist (mostly due to alternate scores), but any will highlight the grandeur and artistic extremities of the genre.

6) The Jazz Singer (1927)

The Jazz Singer earns its place in the pantheon of influential films for one simple reason. While unremarkable in terms of content, the 1927 production was the first film to use sound. Previously, any noise was due to live accompaniment. Now, however, it was coming out of the images themselves. The premier, set to coincide with Yom Kippur around which the plot was based, was by all accounts a frenzy of rapturous applause and cheers. It signaled the end of silent cinema, and thus many elements of the movies - acting styles had to adapt for a start. New stories were possible to tell, while old ones were quickly forgotten. Many stars rapidly faded as they failed to keep up with the times. A technological change more profound than colour, digital or 3D, that is what Warner Brothers' The Jazz Singer did for cinema.

The politically incorrect premier

8) Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)
The first feature-length animated film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs laid the template for future animations. Master illustrator Walt Disney embarked on the ambitious project in 1934, having previously concerned himself only with shorts. The perceived folly drew scorn and concern from many quarters - old Walt even had to mortgage his own house to fund it. With hindsight it is easy to see that the doubters were going to be proven wrong. Painstaking attention to detail was taken by the various artists behind it, who worked tirelessly to achieve a more perfect look. New camera technology was used to enhance a three-dimensional quality. Despite Snow White being hand-drawn, its influence can be traced to today's Pixar computer animations

7) Citizen Kane (1941)

The greatest film of all time, as Citizen Kane is so often declared. Its sheer brilliance influenced almost every filmmaker that followed. Still in his twenties when he wrote, directed, starred in and produced this (he was anything but modest), Orson Welles never managed to recreate the genius to quite the same degree. The protagonist, Charles Foster Kane, is based on the successes and tragedies of sensationalist newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst. In truth, several other characters and personality types were in the mix, but Hearst did not see them. So incensed was he at his negative portrayal that he did everything in his power to starve Citizen Kane of the oxygen of publicity. Indeed, its critical reputation started to reach epic proportions only in the 1950s, when critics and theorists lavished praise upon it. It was innovative in several ways: the layered cinematography introduced a complex depth of field, with experimentation and odd camera angles enhancing the film's idiosyncratic visuals; a non-linear narrative structure which was to be repeated so often during the '40s and '50s; stunningly novel use of sound; and special effects used so consummately that the viewer does not notice them. In practically every way, Citizen Kane transformed the motion picture.

Note the epic depth of field, aged actors and hyperbolic aesthetics

9) The Third Man (1949)

With its Noir style, Europe's The Third Man took the expressionist-tinged, chiaroscuro style to its peak. Canted angles, heavy lighting and crumbling buildings convey the mood of its postwar Viennese setting, then home to black market criminality and ruinous poverty. The soundtrack was a fittingly atmospheric rambling of zither, a traditional central European instrument, which danced along to the changing emotions of the protagonist. Many famous names were involved in the production: Carol Reed, Joseph Cotton, Orson Welles, Graham Greene, David Selznick. This was, perhaps, the secret ingredient to its success. Add in some famous lines, Hollywood chases and gunfights, and an uncompromisingly cynical series of emotions, and it is not hard to see why The Third Man stands out as the peak of cinema's combination of entertainment and art.

10) Hitchcock's Entire Filmography (1922 - 1976)

It is almost impossible to boil the master of suspense down into one condensed production. Vertigo is the critics' favourite, Pyscho ushered in film gore and the slasher subgenre (along with Peeping Tom), and The Birds is a textbook of tension. But Hitchcock had been a successful director as far back as the silent era, and overall the rotund Cockney influenced film more than any individual picture could. To give a comprehensive break-down of his skills would take too long - read a book about him. So a slight cheat, but in every way - thematic, technical, narrative content..inal - cinema would simply not be the same without Alfred Hitchcock.

11) Rome, Open City (Roma, Citta Aperta) (1945)
Roberto Rossellini had been influenced by some works, such as Ossessione, but with Rome, Open City the Mediterranean maestro kick-started Italian Neo-Realism, unleashing a new approach to filmmaking altogether. As the genre's name would suggest, realism was at the heart of things here. And Italy. Rossellini initially began shooting a documentary in 1944 just months after those nasty Nazis had been stomping around the capital. In the grip of war and poverty, shooting was difficult. Thus the movie has the look not of a polished production but an amateur newsreel. Locations were real and extras were non-actors, adding an authenticity that studios blow huge budgets striving to achieve. The shoddy quality serves only to reinforce the fact that we are watching a slice of history. After its release, other filmmakers in Italy followed Rossellini's example. They told stories from the everyday, focusing on people usually ignored by cinema. By removing a camera's sound equipment and dubbing after, they found a new mobility which suited their aims. These radical approaches later influenced French New Wave and New Hollywood. Martin Scorsese, for example, makes films the way that he does today partly due to Rome, Open City's trailblazing. 

12) Breathless (A Bout de Souffle) (1960)
Learning from Italian Neo-Realism's storytelling styles, and profoundly influenced by Hollywood gangster / detective films, Jean-Luc Godard produced a runaway success which was to stand out among other great works of the French New Wave. Focusing on a young criminal who models himself as a Gallic Humphrey Bogart (le Bogy), we watch the tragic tale of a man losing at life. The relationship with his girlfriend, trapped in the middle of this tragedy, forms the central action. Urban location shooting, improvisation, a stripped-back plot, and music caused contemporary viewers to feel as if they were watching something truly energetic. The French New Wave's realism-oriented style mixed with pop culture was to impact Hollywood in much the same way as Italian Neo-Realism.

Le whimsy

13) The Graduate / Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
Since the early 1930s, Hollywood had been censured by the rigid Production Code, enforced by the Hays Office. These puritanical killjoys stamped their moral outlook on cinema with the zeal of Oliver Cromwell. They were never accused of liberalism - the Code's values bordered on fascistic. Saying 'damn', racial miscegenation and nude silhouettes, for example, were completely banned. However, during the sixties (when else) censorship was increasingly undermined, culminating in these two films. The Graduate and Bonnie & Clyde were, at this point, scandalous. Violence, sex and profanity was present in shocking hyperbole. There was blood washing around B & C while The Graduate's pornographic plot was accompanied by the sounds of those hellraisers Simon and Garfunkel. Their acceptance marked the death of censorship. Young filmmakers (such as Scorsese, Coppola and Spielberg) began injecting as much as they could of all that had previously been banned, challenging the very art of cinema. Classical Hollywood was over - New Hollywood had begun.

14) Star Wars (1977)
A technical innovation that does owe something to Stanley Kubrick's '60s space nightmare 2001: A Space Odyssey. Quite simply, the special effects blew cinema apart. They were innovative beyond belief, and furthermore money was lavished on developing technologies after release. It was the highest-grossing film of all time, making an indelible mark on global culture outside of the movies. Two more sequels followed successfully, and a prequel trilogy less successfully. Another trio is in the mix. This is, however, the film to blame for the rise of the blockbuster, stuffed with effects but thematically shallow.

15) Toy Story (1995)
The final item on the list is not a joke - Toy Story really will stand out among the Citizen Kanes of Western cinema. Really, it comes down to the technical accomplishments, and how film is nowadays. For it was the first full CGI film, a feature-length picture made without a single second of recorded acting. In many ways, Toy Story is like a modern Snow White. And it cannot be written off as merely a kids' film. Whereas Avatar is justifiably ridiculed for style over substance, Toy Story is filled with wit, cultural references and adult humour. It stars Tom Hanks and insult comedian Don Rickles, who had acted in Casino and Kelly's Heroes. It grossed millions, achieved critical acclaim, and spawned two equally successful sequels. But more importantly, it ushered in the digital age of cinema, where computers play an unequivocally vital role.

Review: Rome, Open City

In 1945 Italy was in the grip of war, finding itself to be a deadly front between Allied attempts to defeat the Fascists. It was in this climate that Roberto Rossellini, one of the country's most celebrated filmmakers, shot Rome, Open City. The BFI have recently restored the first true example of Italian Neo-Realism and are showing it in an extended run.

With the national film industry having been comprehensively destroyed (they had more pressing issues to concern themselves with), such a project was ambitious. Rossellini initially began shooting a documentary in 1944 about Don Morosini, a martyred priest who helped the Resistance, thanks to the funding of a rich old lady. Various other funds were scrimped and the film evolved into a feature length narrative. Thus the movie has the look not of a polished production but an amateur newsreel - footage was taken mere months after the Nazis had jackbooted around the Eternal City. Locations were real, set in the crumbling courtyards and Fascist apartment blocks where partisans really did hide out. The extras were real people, skinny and weary and struggling, adding an authenticity that studios blow huge budgets striving to achieve. Discarded US Army film stock had to be salvaged for use. In my mind, though, the shoddy production does not detract from enjoying Rome, Open City because we are watching a piece of history. Rossellini's masterpiece takes us into the period better than any recreation could, and that is surely one of the central aims of cinema.

This documentary realism did not stop with Rome, Open City. Inspired by the guerrilla attitude to filmmaking, other Italians learnt from Rossellini. Polished aesthetics were shunned in favour of capturing life. Issues important to normal people were told. Locations, non-professional actors and the downtrodden became fashionable. The camera was used to observe stories of everyday life. Thus Italian Neo-Realism was born, a genre which impacted film profoundly.

It is not simply the style which makes Rome, Open City worth seeing. The story focuses on Francesco and Giorgio, two Communist resistance fighters, who are being hunted by the ruthless pantomime villain Gestapo officer. Francesco's fiancee, Pina, struggles to get by with her son, Marcello, a spirited young scamp who plants bombs with the other neighbourhood kids. Don Pietro, the local priest, uses his position to help the anti-Nazi fighters. Pina's sister is not so moral. Along with a friend, she fraternises with the Germans and acts as an informant in exchange for money. The ghost of poverty was a frightening reality for Italians at the time. So things go wrong, arrests are made, and people are killed. Without giving too much away, several deaths and scenes of torture are as harrowing and depressing today as they must have been in 1945. The brilliant acting completes the documentary realism of the production.

While the German antagonists are rather two-dimensional and cliched, the rest of life in occupied Rome is laid out with a startling proximity. If the aim was to seem as if a camera had been stuck in a street and left there, then Rossellini succeeded.

Review: The Grand Budapest Hotel

The Grand Budapest Hotel is indie quirk-master Wes Anderson’s eighth feature. A unique cinematic specimen, tweed-coated Anderson here forces his inimitable style onto the crime caper. The luxurious trappings of European grand hotels have been the source of inspiration before (the aptly-named Grand Hotel being one), but never has the setting looked quite like this. Such adherence to individual style can be suffocating – sacrificing the emotional content for looks. This charge cannot be leveled against TGBH. 

The story is told in a roundabout way: a girl reads a book, narrated by its deceased author, who relays a tale which was conveyed to him years earlier by a rich hotel owner. Through this rambling, inter-generational introduction the story settles on Gustave H., played brilliantly by Ralph Fiennes, a suffocatingly neat and dedicated concierge of the Grand Budapest Hotel in the 1930s. The owner, now the principal raconteur, was apprenticed to the anachronistic gentleman as a lobby boy during the hotel’s interwar glory days.

Things went pear shaped as Zubrowska, the fictional mid-European country in which we find ourselves, teetered on the brink of war. When the death of an elderly guest puts Gustave in the spotlight as her murderer, he and Zero are thrown into the most Hitchockian of adventures to clear his name. Disguises, sped-up chases, prisons and castles, bumbling cops and fascist soldiers, secret notes, secret societies, secret plans – they are all there. The rambling plot remains tight and thrilling throughout.

Wes Anderson’s idiosyncratic style is instantly recognisable. Apparently on a ceaseless search for the perfectly quirky picture, his films are a controlled chaos of off-beat aesthetics and dazzling colour. The locale of Zubrowska has been meticulously planned down to the smallest of details: delectable old-world confectionary from the hotel’s cake-maker makes frequent appearances, and these luxurious treats are simply miniature versions of what Anderson has created with his scenery. The resemblance to stage sets harks back to the first decades of cinema, when many set designers emigrated from theatre to film. The film looks almost like it is based on specific painting style. I doubt that it is, although there is a hint of Hergé in the cartoon adventure. TGBH is worth watching purely for the visuals.

Another prominent aspect is the panoply of characters who pop up briefly or extendedly. Tilda Swinton is the murdered aristocrat, Adrien Brody her scurrilously evil son, Willem Defoe his hulking enforcer and Jeff Goldblum his deputy; Jude Law is the younger version of Tom Wilkinson’s novelist listening to F. Murray Abraham, the lobby boy in old age; Harvey Keitel, Edward Norton, Bill Murray, Saoirse Ronan, Owen Wilson... I could go on. Thus it is all the more impressive that Fiennes and newcomer Tony Revolori (lobby boy Zero) stand out as the chalk-and-cheese double act in the middle. Most have moustaches.

But for all the uproarious humour and quirky joy, there is a bittersweet quality to TGBH. Anderson has tried to capture, if only momentarily, a European world which was lost in the destruction of world war, communism and (post)modernity. The smart style, the dedication to service and the manners really were better in the old days, apparently. Thus a kind of nostalgia is promoted, with the postscript that all the positive values of yesteryear are lost for eternity. The difference between Anderson and Gustave is that the former realises this world died long ago.

Entertaining? Undeniably so. Funny? Hilariously so. Eccentric? Abundantly so. The camera pans and swirls through the richly mad world of old-European charm. Scratch the Dulux colour chart of a surface, though, and there is grief, loss and death. I suspect that most directors would have veered away from such negativity in what is ultimately a comedy, so it is lucky that tragedy has been injected in the way it has. But with a snap of the fingers Anderson sweeps us back into the delightful decadence of a place that never actually existed.